Title: 3rd Shot
Series: To Good Health
Description: She's in the business of healing people, but she really was never very good with them. People were strange, and her day at the office only confirmed this belief as she attends to seven young men. People were strange indeed. Strange, but interesting…
Rating: PG
Warning(s): AU
Pairing(s): Nichkhun (2PM)/Taeyeon (SNSD)

+ 3rd Shot +

            “So you’re from Thailand?” She questions, trying to be welcoming and reassuring to the nervous blonde man in front of her.

            “Y-Yeh,” he stutters, and she finds it adorable. Wait…

            “Your Korean is pretty good,” she smiles, trying to ignore the smile and blush that was spreading on his cute face. He’s like a kid, and her heart is going all dugeun-dugeun against her will.

            “Komaweoyo!” he says, face lighting up like a sun, his eyes creasing into happy crescents. His face reddens, realizing that he had forgotten to use the more polite form; he should have said ‘kamsahamnida’ or ‘komapseumnida.’ He puffed his cheeks and furrowed his dark eyebrows in embarrassment. “A-ah, jeh-jehseonghamnida Doctor, I meant ‘kamsahamnida.’”

            She shakes her head, still mesmerized by this charming man. “Kwenchanayo,” she says simply and begins the physical examination, standing up and showing him where he should sit. He obliges, and he is obviously pleased with her acceptance of him by her use of more familiar speech.

            “You know, I was really getting homesick and lonely here,” he confides quietly. Taeyeon is taken aback, and she’s glad that her back is turned at the moment. She finishes drying her hands and turns around to see his wistful gaze. She nods understandingly.

            “You’re the first one who’s made me feel comfortable here,” he continued, a smile replacing his previous frown. “You’re patient even though I talk really slowly and you allow me to talk so much.” He laughs. “Komaweoyo, Taeyeon-ssi.”

            “Ah, yes, well, I understand how it’s like to be lonely. It’s kind of lonely around here since everyone has to act professional-like. And it’s even worse since I’m new around here. And no one is my age, so I can’t have nice conversations like this with my coworkers and I haven’t been able to make any friends.” She looks down at the floor, forgetting to keep track of the time as she takes his pulse rate. She notices that he’s listening intently, and she somehow just knows that it isn’t because he’s trying hard to understand what she’s saying, but because he wants simply to understand her. She flushes, “I-I’m just saying that it’s the same way for me too, but it’s not nearly the same as your situation. A-and you can just call me Taeyeon. I’d sort of like to hear that instead of ‘Taeyeon-ssi’ or ‘doctor…’”

            She stops herself, trailing off, before she sounds like even more of an idiot with her unfiltered babbling. She hadn’t meant to be so truthful with someone she’s known for only ten or so minutes. “Then you must call me Nichkhun. I know how you feel with the name thing.” His voice is sympathetic, not pitying, and brings her out of her little daze. Time stops for few moments as they comfort each other with smiles, and they break their gazes with an embarrassed cough and sniff.

            “Ah, mianhaeyo, I’m going to have to check your pulse again.” He nods. They talk conversationally and both try not to flush as she checks his heartbeat and lungs, her hand trembling as they brush past his defined chest, back, and abdomen, voice shaking almost imperceptibly when she asks him to breathe in, breathe out. She pretends that it’s only a figment of her imagination that his breaths are slightly shaky and too controlled rather than relaxed, that his heartbeat isn’t faster than a healthy (and damn fine well-built) male’s should be. Above all, she ignores that tingling sensation she gets whenever they come in contact, which was more than eighty percent of the whole procedure, she’s sure.

            “So, can you teach me a little Thai? Just some basics?” She inquires, trying to get her mind to start working (it almost doesn’t work as she catches his brilliant smile in her periphery).

            “Ah, well some basics. That’s like how to say ‘bye’ and stuff right?” His voice is that of an excited child’s so it’s okay to think that it’s adorable, she tries to reason. “Well, there are a lot of ways to say that, for example—”

            She cuts him off, “how about you teach me how to say ‘hello’ instead?” Damn, what’s wrong with my vocal cords today? she thinks, wondering what kind of condition it’s called when one speaks without thinking. She knows what the implications of her comment are, and she knows that he knows full well too. “So I can use it the next time we meet” is the unspoken, but understood part of the sentence. It was like a pick-up line, in a way. Stupid Taeyeon, why did you say something so stupid?

            “Sa-wat dee-kah,” he says slowly, enunciating.

            “Eh?” She wonders if he’s trying to say something in Korean but is having difficulty with it.

            “That’s how you say ‘hello’ in Thai. Since you’re female. For guys, we say ‘sa-wat dee-khrap.’” She listens intently and mouths the words. “That’s the formal version. You leave off the ‘kah’ or ‘khrap’ to use it informally.” They have a brief session on the pronunciation, and it’s almost time for her lunch break by the time they’re finished. She weakly convinces herself that she’s always been sad to see a patient leave.

            “How do you say ‘can I have your phone number’ in Thai?” She bites her lip, but the words are out of before she realizes it.

          His grin is bigger than ever, reminiscent of a smirk, and he leans to whisper in her ear, “You don’t even need to ask.” She realizes that his lips are soft as they barely brush over her skin, and she wonders if there’s a name to her current condition: increased heart and pulse rate, lack of oxygen, apparent loss of motor control, blankness of the mind, heightened sense of touch and smell, and illogical perception of time (it seems to have stopped for all she knows).

          His touch lingers even after he’s left the room with a princely farewell and a charming wink. She puts a hand on her cheek (let’s add "increased body temperature" and "possible high fever" to her list of symptoms), and her other hand slips into her pocket, feeling the cool smoothness and uneven edges of the piece of scrap paper. Her fever increases by a few degrees as she reads the note; in neat handwriting it said: You wrote it earlier; Look at the patient info sheet ^ ^.